A Hawkish Eye on Downcity
by Tom Mooney
Sunday, April 19, 2009
PROVIDENCE — The birdman of downtown, having descended from his loft for his lunchtime ritual, nears the tail end of his walk when he spies a quarry soaring above the city skyline. “There’s a peregrine.” He peers through his second-hand camera. “Arrgh,” he groans, “never enough zoom… Here he comes.” The falcon, resembling a tiny black cross against the expanse of blue sky, glides toward Waterplace Park where Peter Green stands, neck craned, cap visor rising off his head, shutter clicking. “Oh, look!” Green says. “I’m going to run around and see if I can get a better angle.” He hustles from one side of the basin to the other, snapping pictures from both angles. Afterward, Green eagerly shares what his camera has snared: an amusing image of a bulging bird with seemingly second thoughts. “That was fun for me.”
Green, 35, didn’t pay birds much attention growing up on Long Island or while working in Manhattan. Then the graphic Web designer moved to Providence and had a virtual face-to-beak encounter with a red-tailed hawk in Kennedy Plaza. What he saw through his viewfinder that snowy December day in 2007 – the eviscerated pigeon in the hawk’s bloody talons, the snowflakes settling on the hawk’s brown shoulders, its yellow, primitive eyes, was a revelation he now seeks every lunch hour to capture: portraits of wildness in the concrete heart of the city. “This is the greatest day of my life,” he wrote in an e-mail to a friend that day, attaching some of his hawk photographs. “I feel like a real photographer.” Green’s daily pursuit has made him a sort of Johnny Appleseed of Burnside Park. There are few lunch hours when he’s not out cultivating appreciation for the natural wonders going unnoticed by virtually everyone else. “It’s real nature, right here, downtown,” says Green, who runs his freelance graphic business from his downtown loft. “I don’t have to travel for a vacation for one of those once in a lifetime experiences to see a peregrine falcon. They are right here in front of me. And the consistency [of hawk sightings] is amazing.”
Peter Green / photo by John Freidah
But then the bird swerves away and Green’s chance for another avian close-up passes. Or has it? He looks down into the park’s water basin. A seagull staggers on a flat-topped buoy, 20 yards away, struggling to swallow a fat, flopping eel. It almost hurts to watch. But sharing his enthusiasm, Green has learned, is sometimes difficult with those who consider him one more shaky character in the park. “I’ll be taking a picture of the hawk and I’ll say to someone passing by, ‘Can I show you something please?’ and they’ll say they’re too busy. They’re afraid I want to sell them something.” Green has photographed red-tails and Cooper’s hawks in the park. He has shots of peregrines perched high above Kennedy Plaza in the Bank of America tower. He’s taken photos of a swan nesting in trash along the nearby riverbank, as well as an American Kestrel that came to the bird feeder at his apartment window. Many of the birds of prey are drawn to the park by the flocks of pigeons which people feed, unaware of the trap they are setting. “The hawks wait for the pigeons to all congregate,” says Green, “and then they just come down and pick one up.” Green has become such a familiar sight among the park’s homeless and bus-riders that his reputation at times precedes him. One day a Cooper’s hawk attacked a pigeon in Burnside Park. “A guy saw it and I went up to him and I said, ‘Did you see that?’ and he said ‘It’s a red-tailed hawk.’ And I said ‘Actually that’s a Cooper’s hawk.’ And he said: ‘Listen, there is a photographer who comes here every day photographing the red tailed hawk and he has some exhibit up at RISD and it’s a red-tailed hawk.’ I just left it at that.”
Red-Tailed Hawk attacking downtown pigeons / by Peter Green
Green, who majored in anthropology at Tufts University, hasn’t had an exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design. But his photography has garnered many compliments on his website (downcityhawk.com). And it’s provided so much gratification, that he wonders if he might have found a new career. He recently self-published a collection of his best red-tailed hawk photographs, a work he titled Downcity Hawk featuring one hawk whose punctual dining habits and tolerance for people allowed Green to get up close. “Because he was there so consistently I could plan out the shot ahead of time in my head,” he says. “I have flying, I have eating, I have stocking, I have swallowing, I have perched. I have all the different shots. I knew what I wanted to do was get down with the pigeons and get a shot of him diving down at them.” Green’s efforts paid off a few months ago with one of his favorite photographs. Taken as he lay on the ground, it shows a flock of stirring pigeons preparing to take off in the foreground and the attacking hawk swooping in. “It’s that challenge of getting that perfect shot that I like,” he says. Green carries his hawk book now on his lunchtime walks through the park. “When people point out the hawk I’ll say, ‘You want to see some pictures?’ At first they don’t connect that those pictures are mine. They’ll say, ‘Hopefully your pictures will come out like that book you have.’”
Rhode Island Monthly
Killer Instincts: A sharp-eyed photographer finds an unexpected muse in a city hawk.
by Nicole Marahas / January 2009
Officially, Peter Green is a cat person. But shortly after the graphic designer moved to Providence, the birds began to find him. First were the Peregrine falcons he observed from the roof deck of his Downcity loft. Next, he spotted (and adopted) a parakeet on the sidewalk. Then, he saw the red-tailed hawk in Burnside Park, eating a pigeon in the snow. “It was such a rush,” says Green. For days last winter, he returned to the park, taking photographs. Park rumor had it the hawk was a government-hired gun, brought in to control the pigeon population. “It was bizarre how many people believed that,” says Green – but ever since Pale Male made his home atop a Manhattan high-rise, urban raptors have had a way of capturing the public’s imagination.
An October exhibit of Green’s hawk photos was well-received; his new mission is to get an up-close shot of the falcons. “I’m attuned to city birds now,” he says. “I’ll notice blue jays at the post office, a swan sitting on eggs.” A Cooper’s hawk that recently posed right outside his window proves what Green already knows: Providence birds are ready for their close-up.
InDowncity.com
review by Abby Saunders / October 2008
Green’s collection includes portraits of the bird mid-flight, perching on the city’s architecture, and mid-hunt in the frosty park. It is evident from the images that Green put the time in observing the hawk’s daily activities, capturing intimate moments. He tells us, “I went back daily for two weeks and he was very consistent, always there in the snow stalking pigeons, so regal, simply impossible to resist.” The highlight of the exhibit is a bound book of compiled photographs from the exhibit, along with the “bloodier” ones that Green was prohibited from hanging. Flipping through the work as a whole, one feels a sense of awe and respect for this regal bird. Green explains, “Making eye contact with a wild hawk is truly exhilarating, and the fact it was happening downtown next to a crowded bus station just made it seem even more special…unusual…impossible.”
Reviews
A Hawkish Eye on Downcity
by Tom Mooney
Sunday, April 19, 2009
PROVIDENCE — The birdman of downtown, having descended from his loft for his lunchtime ritual, nears the tail end of his walk when he spies a quarry soaring above the city skyline. “There’s a peregrine.” He peers through his second-hand camera. “Arrgh,” he groans, “never enough zoom… Here he comes.” The falcon, resembling a tiny black cross against the expanse of blue sky, glides toward Waterplace Park where Peter Green stands, neck craned, cap visor rising off his head, shutter clicking. “Oh, look!” Green says. “I’m going to run around and see if I can get a better angle.” He hustles from one side of the basin to the other, snapping pictures from both angles. Afterward, Green eagerly shares what his camera has snared: an amusing image of a bulging bird with seemingly second thoughts. “That was fun for me.”
Green, 35, didn’t pay birds much attention growing up on Long Island or while working in Manhattan. Then the graphic Web designer moved to Providence and had a virtual face-to-beak encounter with a red-tailed hawk in Kennedy Plaza. What he saw through his viewfinder that snowy December day in 2007 – the eviscerated pigeon in the hawk’s bloody talons, the snowflakes settling on the hawk’s brown shoulders, its yellow, primitive eyes, was a revelation he now seeks every lunch hour to capture: portraits of wildness in the concrete heart of the city. “This is the greatest day of my life,” he wrote in an e-mail to a friend that day, attaching some of his hawk photographs. “I feel like a real photographer.” Green’s daily pursuit has made him a sort of Johnny Appleseed of Burnside Park. There are few lunch hours when he’s not out cultivating appreciation for the natural wonders going unnoticed by virtually everyone else. “It’s real nature, right here, downtown,” says Green, who runs his freelance graphic business from his downtown loft. “I don’t have to travel for a vacation for one of those once in a lifetime experiences to see a peregrine falcon. They are right here in front of me. And the consistency [of hawk sightings] is amazing.”
Peter Green / photo by John Freidah
But then the bird swerves away and Green’s chance for another avian close-up passes. Or has it? He looks down into the park’s water basin. A seagull staggers on a flat-topped buoy, 20 yards away, struggling to swallow a fat, flopping eel. It almost hurts to watch. But sharing his enthusiasm, Green has learned, is sometimes difficult with those who consider him one more shaky character in the park. “I’ll be taking a picture of the hawk and I’ll say to someone passing by, ‘Can I show you something please?’ and they’ll say they’re too busy. They’re afraid I want to sell them something.” Green has photographed red-tails and Cooper’s hawks in the park. He has shots of peregrines perched high above Kennedy Plaza in the Bank of America tower. He’s taken photos of a swan nesting in trash along the nearby riverbank, as well as an American Kestrel that came to the bird feeder at his apartment window. Many of the birds of prey are drawn to the park by the flocks of pigeons which people feed, unaware of the trap they are setting. “The hawks wait for the pigeons to all congregate,” says Green, “and then they just come down and pick one up.” Green has become such a familiar sight among the park’s homeless and bus-riders that his reputation at times precedes him. One day a Cooper’s hawk attacked a pigeon in Burnside Park. “A guy saw it and I went up to him and I said, ‘Did you see that?’ and he said ‘It’s a red-tailed hawk.’ And I said ‘Actually that’s a Cooper’s hawk.’ And he said: ‘Listen, there is a photographer who comes here every day photographing the red tailed hawk and he has some exhibit up at RISD and it’s a red-tailed hawk.’ I just left it at that.”
Red-Tailed Hawk attacking downtown pigeons / by Peter Green
Killer Instincts: A sharp-eyed photographer finds an unexpected muse in a city hawk.
by Nicole Marahas / January 2009
Officially, Peter Green is a cat person. But shortly after the graphic designer moved to Providence, the birds began to find him. First were the Peregrine falcons he observed from the roof deck of his Downcity loft. Next, he spotted (and adopted) a parakeet on the sidewalk. Then, he saw the red-tailed hawk in Burnside Park, eating a pigeon in the snow. “It was such a rush,” says Green. For days last winter, he returned to the park, taking photographs. Park rumor had it the hawk was a government-hired gun, brought in to control the pigeon population. “It was bizarre how many people believed that,” says Green – but ever since Pale Male made his home atop a Manhattan high-rise, urban raptors have had a way of capturing the public’s imagination.
An October exhibit of Green’s hawk photos was well-received; his new mission is to get an up-close shot of the falcons. “I’m attuned to city birds now,” he says. “I’ll notice blue jays at the post office, a swan sitting on eggs.” A Cooper’s hawk that recently posed right outside his window proves what Green already knows: Providence birds are ready for their close-up.
InDowncity.com
review by Abby Saunders / October 2008
Green’s collection includes portraits of the bird mid-flight, perching on the city’s architecture, and mid-hunt in the frosty park. It is evident from the images that Green put the time in observing the hawk’s daily activities, capturing intimate moments. He tells us, “I went back daily for two weeks and he was very consistent, always there in the snow stalking pigeons, so regal, simply impossible to resist.” The highlight of the exhibit is a bound book of compiled photographs from the exhibit, along with the “bloodier” ones that Green was prohibited from hanging. Flipping through the work as a whole, one feels a sense of awe and respect for this regal bird. Green explains, “Making eye contact with a wild hawk is truly exhilarating, and the fact it was happening downtown next to a crowded bus station just made it seem even more special…unusual…impossible.”